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WASHINGTON 



AN ADDRESS 



CHARLES A. CLARK 



WASHINGTON 



BY 

CHARLES A. CLARK 



AN ADDRESS BEFORE THE LINN COUNTY 
BAR ASSOCIATION AND ITS GUESTS AT 
ITS ANNUAL BANQUET AT THE HOTEL 
MONTROSE, CEDAR RAPIDS. IOWA 
FEBRUARY 22. 1909 



THE TORCH PRESS 
CEDAR RAPIDS, IOWA 
NINETEEN NINE 



t 3 1 i. 
.6>S 



Be it resolved, by the Linn County Bar Asso- 
ciation, that, 

As a token of our appreciation of the address 
upon Washington by Col. Chas. A. Clark at the 
banquet tendered by this bar to the bar of John- 
son County on February 22d, 1909, there shall 
be printed five hundred copies thereof; that a 
bound copy be presented to Colonel Clark; that 
a copy be presented to each of the members of 
the Johnson County Bar and other guests, and 
that this resolution be printed with said address. 



WASHINGTON 

Mr. Toast-master ; my lone, and I fear lonely Brother 
of the Gospel (Rev. Mr. Newton) ; and my Breth- 
ren of the Law: 

I hear an ominous rumbling of your ''minds 
working/' as the colored brother would say, and the 
refrain which you are unitedly giving utterance to 
mentally is, "Now for George Washington and his 
little hatchet!" That is the one point in our great 
national hero which, like the heel of Achilles, has 
been thought vulnerable to attacks of sarcasm. More 
fat-witted and inane jests have been attempted over 
this episode than human patience can endure. Their 
only parallel is that of the man who crowds into 
an omnibus, with a fatuous and stupid grin, and 
with the highly original remark that "there is 
always room for one more.'' The hatchet story 
itself is evidently a fabrication. It comes from 
the Reverend Mr. Weems, who wrote the ini- 
tial life of Washington, in a stilted and affected 
style wholly peculiar to itself. The reverend gentle- 
man was originally a minister of the Protestant 
Episcopal Church, and was for a time rector of the 
parish of Mt. Vernon. His livelihood in that situa- 
tion was so beggarly that he became a traveling 
book agent, and went up and down the land selling 
the literary ventures of that day. He was accom- 



panied by his violin, ^j^ did not hesitate to furnish 
music for country dances and merrymakings, 
mingling with his music his commendations of the 
books he offered for sale. According to his story, 
as he sets forth the anecdote in his biography of 
Washington, he received the incident twenty years 
earlier from a then very aged lady who was a distant 
relative of the "Washington family. She had cer- 
tainly passed away when he wrote this unique biog- 
raphy, and no lawyer ever had an opportunity to 
cross examine her. The tale itself, as narrated by 
this veracious chronicler, furnishes the best com- 
mentary of its grotesqueness and improbability in 
the final words of Washington's father, praising 
the heroic utterance of the lad with the hatchet. 
He is represented as saying: ''Eun to my arms; 
glad am I, George, that you have killed my tree ; for 
you have paid me a thousand fold. Such an act 
of heroism in my son is worth more than a thousand 
trees, though blossomed with silver, and their fruits 
of purest gold." Whether the ''act of heroism" 
consisted in killing the tree, or in telling the truth 
about it, the over-zealous author does not explain ! 

"Blossoms of silver, and fruitage of gold," are 
quite as probable as the remainder of the well in- 
tended but incredible fiction. 

George Washington never was a prematurely 
developed prig. He was a healthy, wholesome, vig- 
orous boy. Born like Lincoln in a log cabin, amidst 
humble backwoods surroundings, he was a genuine 
child of the soil, simple and without pretense or 
any trace of artificial self consciousness. His im- 
perfect education was received, first from a Mr. 
Eoddy, at what was then known as a "field 



school;" then at the hands of a Mr. Williams 
who taught him the scant rudiments of reading, writ- 
ing and arithmetic; afterwards he attended for a 
brief period an academy at old Fredericksburg pre- 
sided over by a Mr. Marye, a French huguenot, or the 
son of a huguenot who had fled from France to escape 
the fierce persecutions heaped upon the protestants 
of that realm. The indomitable love of liberty, free- 
dom of thought, and the right to worship God accord- 
ing to the dictates of one's conscience, so dear to 
these exiles, were no doubt impressed by this teacher 
upon the mind of his young pupil. It was he who 
gave the name *' Marye 's Heights" to the bluffs back 
of Fredericksburg, where, in December, 1862, amid 
the thunders of artillery, the rattle of musketry and 
the horrors of battle, Burnside's forces led by the 
gallant Hancock were repulsed again and again in 
spite of their heroism and valor. 

Later still, but this is not certain, he may have 
had the benefit of a fragmentary term at ''William 
& Mary's," at Williamsburg. Such were the pitiful 
educational opportunities afforded Washington to 
fit him for his great career. 

Following his schooldays, his work as a sur- 
veyor was arduous and full of exposure and hard- 
ship. In his twentieth year he participated as an 
officer of the Virginia militia in the expedition 
against Fort Duquesne, which terminated in the dis- 
astrous defeat and overthrow of Braddock. It was 
due to his courage and efficiency that the remnant 
of the disorganized British and Colonial forces was 
brought safely back from that bloody field. In 1758, 
he served under General Forbes, and took part in the 
capture of that Fort and the expulsion of the French 



from the valley of t)|^Ohio. Re-named Fort Pitt, 
the post gave the name to Pittsburg, now a great 
center of American industry. 

For nearly twenty years following this youth- 
ful military experience Washington was wholly de- 
voted to the pursuits of peace. When the Revolu- 
tion broke out he was called to the command of the 
armies of his countrymen. The scattered colonies 
then numbered about three millions of people, as a 
whole poor and struggling with hard and adverse 
conditions, but animated by the unconquerable love 
of liberty, and a burning determination to achieve 
independence. The long years of that war were 
years of suffering, wretchedness, privation and woe, 
and, as the struggle went forward, all these seemed 
concentrated with crushing weight upon the shoul- 
ders of George Washington, that heroic figure, who 
stood through all storm, disaster and stress, the hope 
of the American people. Almost super-human were 
the energies, strength and endurance called for in 
this terrific strain; but he was equal to the mighty 
crisis and endured to the end. 

There came a time in 1780 when everything was 
at its worst. Doubt, and gloom, and despair rested 
like a pall over all the colonies. Washington wrote 
to congress that unless something could be done for 
his famished and unpaid army in which one-half the 
enlistments were about to expire, it would be almost 
miraculous if America could be saved for Americans, 
by Americans, without the aid of foreign arms. At 
that time continental paper money was so depreciat- 
ed that it required ten dollars to equal a single penny 
of honest money. Four months pay of a private 
soldier was required to buy a single bushel of wheat 



for his suffering family, and even that wretched 
semblance of pay the soldier conld not get ! Butter 
was quoted at twelve dollars per pound. A barrel of 
flour cost an incredible amount. Washington said 
it took a wagon-load of continental paper money to 
purchase a wagon-load of provisions for his soldiers. 
Sturdy old Sam Adams, called the "father of the 
revolution," paid at this time two thousand dollars 
for a hat and suit of clothes. A barber in Philadel- 
phia papered his shop with continental notes. A 
dog was smeared with tar, covered with this wretched 
currency, and led up and down the streets in front 
of Independence Hall where congress was as- 
sembled, hooted at, and jeered at, in the hope of 
calling the attention of these statesmen to the 
wretched condition of the currency they furnished 
the people. Congress could do nothing! The ex- 
pression, "Not worth a continental" originated in 
that day, and was an utterance of the loathing and 
contempt of the people on all hands, for a currency 
which had ceased to bear any semblance of money. 
Then came a gleam of hope from the action of 
our generous French allies. Seven thousand French 
troops under command of Rochambeau, with the 
chivalrous Lafayette as his lieutenant, landed on 
American soil, and were within striking distance of 
Yorktown. De Grasse co-operated, with the French 
navy. Washington seized the opportunity by a 
stroke of rare military genius. He gathered to- 
gether his ragged, famished forces, disorganized by 
suffering and long privation, and hurled his army, 
a thunderbolt of war, straight across three hundred 
miles of country ; and in a campaign which in concep- 
tion and execution, still commands the study and ad- 



miration of competent^ilitary critics, he effected a 
junction with the French forces, and fell upon and 
throttled the greatest British military force upon 
American soil. The surrender of Cornwallis fol- 
lowed, and independence was achieved. 

The words seem poor and inadequate when it is 
said, Washington had earned the reverent love of 
his countrymen, and the admiration of the world. 

Our own historian, Fiske, has made a careful 
study of this crisis in the war for independence, 
which it is impossible to read without the gravest 
doubts as to whether that war would not have failed 
under the accumulated difficulties to which reference 
has been made, but for the succor and aid of our 
gallant and generous French allies. To the people 
of France, now happily welded into a firmly estab- 
lished sister republic, we owe a debt of warmest 
gratitude. To that people we should be bound by 
ties of hereditary friendship, rather than to any ab- 
solute despotism of the far north, where one man has 
long held sway over the destinies of one hundred and 
thirty millions of our fellow men, consigning at his 
whim, or at the caprice and suggestion of some in- 
human monster under him, helpless victims in un- 
known numbers, to the dungeon or to death. 

With independence achieved under Washington, 
as national existence was later established under 
the immortal Lincoln, the weak and impoverished 
colonies were face to face with new difficulties and 
dangers. There seemed to be in the breasts of all 
a fear of any form or semblance of authority, which 
all history up to that time had shown was certain 
to be abused by encroachments upon human liberties, 
if entrusted to human hands. Distrust and doubt 



were well nigh universal. A confederacy of states 
was the first expedient adopted ; a mere rope of sand 
where the closest and strongest ties were imperative. 
Under it there was no semblance of central author- 
ity. The old continental congress continued its im- 
potent existence, lasting in all fourteen years with 
the few changes in membership caused by death or 
resignation, the sole repository of the conflicting 
interests and desires, rather than of the will of the 
newly confederated states. This congress was with- 
out power to enforce its merely academic utterances 
and attempts at theoretical legislation. There was 
no head to the government. The only semblance of 
head, a mere vague and intangible shadow, was the 
presiding officer for the time being of that hapless 
assembly, which was without power of real initiative 
or genuine execution, and even this shadow of head- 
ship aroused such fears that the articles of confed- 
eration provided it should be held by the same per- 
son no longer than one year in any three. 

The states left to themselves, each a separate 
and distinct sovereignty owing neither allegiance nor 
obedience to any form of central or national author- 
ity, each went about its own affairs and its own 
interests in its own way, often asserting these by 
legislation in hostility to sister states. 

It would be thought that disastrous experience 
with a worthless continental currency would have 
warned them of the dangers of fiat paper money ; but 
on the contrary they rushed into a new saturnalia 
of irredeemable issues, with the inevitable result of 
new disaster and wretchedness. There was no real 
money in the land. Merchants were assailed and 
mobbed for draining the country of specie in paying 



for their importations^ Massachusetts had the hon- 
esty to propose that its currency should be taken at 
a steadily declining ratio of value depending upon 
its age, until it finally wiped itself out by jumping 
down its own throat, and thus made way for a new 
and equally worthless issue, which in turn should 
swallow itself and disappear. The old fable of 
Chronos devouring his own children was improved 
upon even in that crude state of American inventive 
genius. This spawn devoured itself, and its only 
virtue was that no residue remained when the oper- 
ation was completed! 

Rhode Island, which during these years 
of confusion and misery earned the name of 
''Rogue's Island," enacted the most drastic legisla- 
tion to compel the acceptance of its currency as 
lawful money — a penalty of five hundred dollars 
was imposed for each refusal. A butcher declined 
to sell his beef for currency which would hardly pur- 
chase paper fit to wrap it in. He was dragged be- 
fore the courts, and his name, like that of the pos- 
sessor of legal tender who hungered for beef, got 
into judicial history. In the resulting case of Trev- 
itt, the famished, vs. Weeden, the butcher, the Rhode 
Island Supreme Court declared the act unconstitu- 
tional. The legislature summarily removed the 
judges, and prepared a new legal tender act, which 
provided that no man should vote or hold office, 
until he had taken an oath that he would receive 
paper money at par and support the proposed leg- 
islation. The general breakdown came before this 
was enacted into law. Confusion and discord were 
widespread on every hand. Rebellion broke out in 
Massachusetts. Armed mobs over-turned all sem- 

10 



blance of civil authority. In large areas of that, and 
the sister states of New Hampshire, Vermont and 
Rhode Island, all semblance of the orderly adminis- 
tration of justice was defied and trampled upon. 
The courts were powerless and were temporarily 
driven out of existence. When there finally emerged 
from this vortex of madness, after tumultous and 
bloody experiences, the return of legitimate civil au- 
thority and the beneficent administration of justice 
by the courts in place of the fury of mobs, the peo- 
ple of these sorely smitten areas realized, as never 
before, the blessings of constitutional liberty, of civil 
authority, and of the orderly administration of jus- 
tice. Never from that day to this in those commun- 
ities have the courts been denounced, nor have there 
been wild outcries of ''judicial usurpation," or of 
''government by injunction." 

The same experience would teach the same les- 
son in our own day, but heaven preserve us from like 
calamity ! 

For five years the Confederation limped along, 
a wounded, diseased and wretched spectacle among 
the nations. Fortunately for our common country 
Washington was a statesman as well as a military 
genius. With that "saving common sense" which 
was so marked a characteristic of his character in all 
conditions and under all circumstances, he saw that 
deliverance from anarchy might be secured through 
an effective central control, armed with power to 
act for the general good of all the states. He said, 
"It is as clear to me as A, B, C, that the extension 
of federal powers would make us one of the most 
happy, wealthy, respectable and powerful nations 
that ever inhabited the terrestrial globe. Without 

11 



this we shall soon be^erything which is the direct 
reverse. I predict the worst consequences from a 
half starved, limping government, always moving 
upon crutches, and tottering at every step." 

His words had their effect. Where all sem- 
blance of rational action had seemed in danger of 
being wholly swept away in a tumultuous flood of 
aroused passions, the expedient of a national con- 
vention of delegates from the several states to con- 
sider the desperate condition of the affairs of the 
country was finally adopted, and, after one effort 
at meeting, at which only five states were repre- 
sented, there finally assembled in May, 1787, that 
body of illustrious men who were to organize free- 
dom into a national government for a free people. 
** Rogue's Island" was not represented. 

The convention was technically without power 
to frame a constitution. Its action was hotly crit- 
icised. Congress was hostile and called its doings 
in question, but finally, as its work was to be sub- 
mitted to the people for ratification, that body with- 
drew its objections and the convention addressed 
itself to the mighty problems before it. George 
Washington, by common consent, was called upon 
to preside over its deliberations. Here again con- 
fusion and discord reigned. Distrust and suspicion 
were universal, the smaller states fearing that their 
rights might be placed at the mercy of the larger 
and more powerful commonwealths to be ruthlessly 
trampled upon or taken from them. There were 
heated discussions, with no agreement; prolonged 
sessions, with no results; debates which were fiiiit- 
ful only of new diflSculties, and the first half of the 
convention was barren of all promise or any hope 

12 



of successful issue. At this crisis wise old Benjamin 
Franklin suggested that ministers of the Gospel be 
brought in to invoke the blessings of divine Provi- 
dence on behalf of the distracted assembly. And 
then it was that George Washington made the one 
address of his life, which was not committed to 
paper and read from manuscript. It was no more 
than ten or a dozen lines in print, but, as set down 
in Madison's record his words were golden, full of 
the earnestness and conviction, of a great soul, and 
it is quite possible that they had more effect upon 
the assembled delegates than the invocations which 
the ministers of religion addressed to the throne of 
grace. He said in substance : ' ' We are surrounded 
by great difficulties. Perhaps another terrible con- 
flict is to be sustained. Let us honestly devote our 
best efforts to the work before us. If we offer what 
we ourselves disapprove, how can we afterwards 
defend our work ? Let us raise a standard to which 
the wise and the honest can repair; the event is in 
the hand of God. ' ' 

Animated by this noble appeal the Convention 
resumed its labors. Reason resumed its sway. The 
matchless constitution under which, with slight 
changes, we live and enjoy such unparalleled bless- 
ings and happiness, was the final result of the labors 
of those illustrious men. 

One battle royal was over the question of ad- 
mitting the people into participation in the affairs 
of the national government. That was undoubtedly 
the most vital issue to all the future with which the 
convention had to deal. The Confederacy had dealt 
with states only. The members of its one congress 
were elected by the states, and not directly by the 

18 



people. They spoke for the states; they voted by 
the states, each stal^having a single vote upon 
any given proposition, the smallest state counting 
one on each roll call, the largest counting no more 
than one. Local jealousy, the fear of predominance 
of numbers, was the paralysis agitans which spilled 
the contents of every cup before it reached the lips 
of the people. This deadening palsy dominated the 
convention. It threatened all at the very threshold, 
on the initial question as to the method in which 
votes should be taken in its deliberations. The small 
states cowered before the large, but insisted upon 
the unit vote for each state with all the obstinacy of 
which cowardice alone is capable. Under the wise 
advice of Washington and his fellow delegates from 
Virginia the unit rule was conceded, and disruption, 
before any possible action, was avoided. The same 
question presented itself in more aggravated form 
when the composition of a national congress came 
up for determination. Should the people be allowed 
direct participation in any form in the affairs of the 
new government ? Should they have representation, 
or should it be confined solely to the states, as such, 
in accordance with precedent and usage? On the 
solution of this question mighty issues depended — 
we can see now that nothing less than the future 
and existence of a grand and mighty republic de- 
pended. Fortunately for that republic and for man- 
kind the people were given a voice in their own 
affairs and it was settled that representatives in the 
lower house of the congress should be elected by 
direct vote of the people in proportion to numbers. 
Not without misgivings and doubts, not without pas- 
sion, prejudice, cowardice, fear, frenzied uproar 

14 



which threatened all — and finally not without com- 
promise was attained this mighty means of regen- 
eration and salvation in a government of the people. 
Senators, by this compromise, were still to be chosen 
by the states through their respective legislatures, 
each state to have the same number, which gave 
them an equal vote, the equivalent of the old unit 
rule, in one branch of the congress. The thought 
was that in the senate the vote might still be, in 
effect, by states; but thank God the day has come 
in the affairs of the American people when state 
lines are wiped out in the senate, as in the house of 
representatives, and all who speak for the nation 
in its legislative halls, speak and vote their indi- 
vidual convictions, regardless of the old theory of 
voting for states and by states ; an utterly exploded 
theory of government for more than eighty millions 
of freemen. 

So in distrust of the people, was invented the 
machinery of the electoral college in the selection 
of the chief magistrate of the nation. Thus the 
people were to be barred of direct participation 
in the choice of president. It was then thought 
that they would choose their wisest and best to repair 
to Washington, and after mature deliberation, choose 
a president for the people, as their superior wisdom 
and virtue should guide in the performance of this 
great duty. These limitations upon the direct voice 
of the people in control of the government have 
disappeared. In the healthy and robust man it 
sometimes happens that a clot of blood or a plug is 
carried into an artery of the brain, cutting off 
arterial circulation there, and entailing paralysis 
or threatening death. Then one of two things may 

15 



happen. If the individual is robust enough his flow 
of arterial blood n^ absorb and remove the clot 
and nature thus re-assert her normal and beneficent 
sway. Or the clot may remain in the artery and the 
reparative forces of nature may establish collateral 
circulation around it, still carrying the life-giving 
current into the plugged up channel beyond the ob- 
struction, and nourishing the threatened portion of 
the brain anew, while the obstruction remains with- 
out detriment to the marvelous forces which nature 
has ordained. 

So of the artificial impediment, the electoral 
college, designed as a restraint upon the untram- 
melled will of the American people, which is after 
all the strong flood of arterial circulation giving 
vigor to the very brain and ruling power of the 
government in all of its functions and complex 
activities ; that has established collateral circulation 
around this carefully finished and inserted plug, and 
the head of the nation is directly responsive to this 
vital and controlling force, with results which have 
given us a long line of illustrious presidents, includ- 
ing the immortal Lincoln. And so, too, collateral 
circulation has been largely established around the 
artificial device by which it was intended to take 
from direct vote of the people the choice of United 
States senators. Direct nominations by the people 
are doing as to this, what nominations for direct vote 
of the people have long done as to the choice of presi- 
dent, with no more harmful result in the one case 
than in the other. Every citizen now votes as di- 
rectly his choice for president as though the elec- 
toral college had no existence, and a black man in 
Kansas, has been found good enough, as an elector 

16 



and errand boy, to carry the result of this direct vote 
in that state to Washington. 

The effect of bringing public servants face to 
face with the people without the intervention of arti- 
ficial barriers of any character, for the discussion 
of public questions, and the direct judgment of the 
people in choice from rival candidates, has been 
found in general to give vigor and courage to the 
convictions of those who have submitted their claims 
to this tribunal, and has been productive of only 
good results in our national legislation. Why there 
should be hesitation or doubt as to bringing the 
United States senators to the same tests, before 
the same great tribunal of the people in their selec- 
tion, it would seem difficult to determine. This is 
perhaps a controversial question not proper for con- 
sideration and comment on this occasion. It may be 
debatable, or, at any rate it is debated, whether 
finally putting the choice of both branches of our 
national legislature directly into the hands of the 
people is altogether desirable, although the original 
theory upon which United States senators were to be 
selected has been wholly out-lived and utterly re- 
jected in the practical affairs of our national legis- 
lation of today. The potential voice of Mr. Ex-Sec- 
retary of State Boot — now Senator Root, of New 
York — has lately been heard in support of the 
choice of senators by servants of the people, rather 
than by the people themselves who are the only 
sovereign power, and employ or designate ser- 
vants, who, according to the argument, are wiser 
and more competent than their employers. But 
Senator Root himself is on record as endorsing and 
supporting nominations of United States senators 



17 



by direct vote of tip people. This simply means 
collateral circulation around an artificial interven- 
ing medium, precisely the same as in the election of 
our presidents. Why the plug should be retained 
as an obstruction to direct circulation, where colla- 
teral circulation does the same work, it may puzzle 
human ingenuity to explain. It may be that, like 
the human appendix which we are told has no mis- 
sion to perform, the plug should be left for occa- 
sional difficult surgical operations by skilful political 
doctors, as our surgeons of the human anatomy per- 
form like difficult operations in cutting out the ap- 
pendix. 

The question has already become largely theo- 
retical and the final solution of these speculations 
is at hand if it has not already been reached. This 
we know; the people are to be trusted with the 
mightiest questions and in the mightiest crises, as 
they were trusted by that immortal man, Abraham 
Lincoln during the war for the Union. 

So the question of admitting the people to direct 
participation in the affairs of the government was 
wisely solved by the convention over which Wash- 
ington presided, in spite of all doubts, misgivings 
and fears. Other difficulties were surmounted. 
Order was brought out of chaos. The constitution 
was framed, submitted to the people and ratified, 
and the nation, under the central control thus estab- 
lished, started upon the growth and development of 
prosperity and happiness, seen in prophetic vision 
by Washington, and foretold by him in words ade- 
quate for all the achievements of the past and all 
the hopes of the future. 

18 



He was called by the united voices and the unan- 
imous suffrages of his countrjniien to preside as 
chief magistrate over the destinies of the new re- 
public. It was felt that he might be entrusted with 
that power, dreaded in that day, with premonitions 
of disaster which we can hardly comprehend, and 
that the sacred trust would be faithfully adminis- 
tered, and returned inviolable and undesecrated to 
the hands of the people. It was so administered and 
so returned. Washington set the government of the 
republic firmly upon its feet, and, at the end of 
eight years gladly laid down the power entrusted to 
liis hands, without usurped enlargement or arbitrary 
encroachment in the minutest detail or particular. 
This was a public service no less important and 
distinguished than those already rendered by him, 
and it commanded the deep and abiding love and 
veneration of his countrymen. If, during the eight 
years of his administration, in the then existing 
condition of affairs, any considerable party had been 
organized with the approval or even the toleration 
of Washington, for the purpose of making him the 
hereditary head of the republic, it is difficult to say 
that immediate success would not have crowned its 
efforts. His absolute integrity and purity of pur- 
pose, his deep and profound patriotism, rendered 
impossible such effort or such thought, and Wash- 
ington retired from power to the peaceful shades 
of private life greater than he had ever been before, 
a grand and commanding figure in the history of 
mankind. 

It is a weariness to the flesh to read continually 
of the greatest man produced by America ; the great- 
est man produced by Virginia; the greatest man 

19 



produced by Illinoi^ or Iowa; or this state or that 
county. Iowa "proouces" com and hogs! Such men 
as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln are 
God Almighty's men; not the product of any state, 
locality, clime or soil ; they are a sacred heritage of 
the nation and of mankind, whose memories are to 
be reverently cherished and whose virtues are to be 
devoutly set up as standards of excellence for the 
future. 

Within the bounds of sober truth it may be said 
with all earnestness, that these two men have done 
more for humanity wherever dispersed over the sur- 
face of the earth, than all emperors, kings, princes, 
and hereditary rulers, of whom record can be found 
from the earliest syllable of recorded history down 
to the present time. 

The services of Washington to his country did 
not cease with his retirement from office. The coun- 
sels of his masterly farewell address still commend 
themselves to the minds of his fellow-countrymen. 
Much has been made of his words regarding ''over- 
grown military establishments"; but it was never 
his thought that the military arm of the national 
government should be left powerless, with atrophied 
nerve and muscle, and with no means of executing 
the mandate of the nation in its legitimate domain. 
He keenly felt the impotent condition of the govern- 
ment during the whiskey rebellion of Western Penn- 
sylvania when he was practically without an efficient 
regiment to uphold its power. 

In his farewell address itself he insisted upon 
an adequate military force. In repeated messages 
to Congress he urged this view upon their attention. 
It is safe to say that if George Washington had been 

20 



president when the supreme court of the United 
States ordered the release of the Massachusetts mis- 
sionaries convicted and imprisoned under the laws 
of Georgia for daring to preach the Gospel to the 
Cherokee Indians of that state, he would not have 
said, as Andrew Jackson did, ''John Marshall has 
ordered these missionaries released; now let John 
Marshall release them. ' ' The judgment of the high- 
est tribunal of the land would not have been nullified 
and abrogated with "Washington as president, and a 
military power subject to his own command adequate 
to enforce the mandate of that tribunal. Nor would 
the pitiful expedient have been resorted to, of hav- 
ing the governor of Georgia pardon these mission- 
aries, to obviate a semblance of conflict between the 
state and the federal tribunals of justice. 

Washington stood for human liberty under the 
law and under the government as established and 
ordained. Not for unrestricted license in violation 
of law; but for defense of law in its final analysis 
and determination, from any citizen and from the 
misguided authorities of any state. 

So he advised an adequate ajjd sufficient navy 
for defense at home and for commanding respect 
abroad. 

He declared that the protection of a naval force 
was indispensable to our commerce. That to secure 
respect for a peaceful neutral flag, required a naval 
force, organized and ready to vindicate it from insult 
or aggression. That if we desired to avoid insult, 
we must be able to repel it; if we desired to secure 
peace, it must be known that we are ready for war. 
He foresaw and declared, even in that day, that our 
foreign commerce would be one of the most powerful 

21 



instruments in our rising prosperity. Today that 
commerce lias becdife enonnous and marvelous, cov- 
ering the whole face of the globe. It takes to other 
climes and other peoples the surplus of our agricul- 
tural products and of our manufactured articles, 
the result of a matchless energy and inventive genius. 
This commerce leads to intercourse and commercial 
relations with the remotest corners of the earth, 
wherever it is carried on. It takes our citizens 
abroad in its distribution and in its many affairs. 
Great as is our prosperity, it is interwoven and 
bound up with the prosperity of our foreign com- 
merce. If ever attacked successfully, wide-spread 
domestic disaster and suffering would be the im- 
mediate result. It is idle under such circumstances 
as these to suppose that a great nation can allow 
its foreign interests to develop and grow with no 
adequate protection in the form of a navy. Our 
merchants and citizens can not be mere mendicants 
upon foreign shores, subject to expulsion and to 
the confiscation and destruction of their vast inter- 
ests at the whim of every foreign government. The 
naval policy of Washington is adequate to protect 
every need of our vast foreign interests, including 
the safety of our citizens in other lands. 

That policy is the policy of the American people 
of today, endorsed and upheld by all, without prac- 
tical division or dissent. 

On this very day there sails into the broad 
harbor of Hampton Roads, a great and powerful 
American fleet, on its return from a matchless voy- 
age around the world. It has commanded the ad- 
miration of the nations, as it has stirred the patriotic 
ardor of Americans. Wherever it has sailed into 

22 



foreign ports and run up the starry ensign of lib- 
erty, that banner has been received with the ap- 
plause and the love of other peoples, to whom it has 
waved as the symbol of freedom, and the foe of the 
despotisms of accumulated centuries. The great 
demonstration has been one of peace to the ends of 
the earth, and has wrought mightily for the peaceful 
protection of our citizens and their commerce in 
every nation and in every clime. And so our ships 
of war have sailed home with the blessings and 
benedictions of the world following them as they 
drop anchor once more in our own waters. 

The universal acclaim which has hailed our flag ; 
the love, the veneration, the spontaneous good will 
and the quickened hopes it has inspired among the 
down-trodden, who are struggling forward to the 
goal of freedom which we have so happily attained, 
and for whom our banner floats as the emblem 
of humanity, the promise of nations regenerated 
and redeemed from oppression — all these, un- 
dimmed by human tear, unstained by human blood, 
gathered up in a galaxy of resplendent glory, are a 
fitting crown for the fame of George Washington 
and of Abraham Lincoln. 



23 



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